Of Captains and Queens
by starsthatburn
Summary: Prompt from hope2x: Set on the journey to Neverland, Regina begins to grow jealous over Hook's apparent relationship with Emma.


_**A/N: **Prompt from **hope2x **for being my 250th reviewer on A Trail Of Destruction: set on the ship, Regina thinks that Emma will go for Hook and she gets jealous. Leads to some outbursts and swan queen goodness._

_I had a lot of fun writing this one! Like most people, I am a huge fan of jealous Regina... I may have gone a little off track at times but I hope you enjoy it anyway :)_

* * *

**Of Captains and Queens**

'It's your move, Regina.'

'I'm well aware of that thank you, Miss Swan,' Regina replied without looking up from the chess board. She had been leaning forwards against the edge of the table for some time now, her forehead furrowing as she examined the board between her and the blonde. The board that, outrageously, appeared to be betraying her.

She had laughed when a bored Emma had suggested that they play a game to pass the time. She had then nearly completely collapsed in on herself when the game that she had suggested was chess. Because Regina excelled at chess: her father had played with her since a young age and, as a result of his hotly competitive Latino blood, he had rarely let her win. As a result, she had been forced to become good at it. Brilliant, even.

It was therefore making her very teeth ache to learn that, quite inexplicably, Miss Swan was even better.

Regina wetted her lips, feeling Emma's eyes on her, and reached out to move her bishop. As quick as a flash, Emma's queen appeared out of seemingly nowhere and the bishop was gone. Regina groaned.

'This is _ridiculous_,' she muttered to herself, leaning back as far as she could on the uncomfortable bench. 'You must be cheating.'

'You've been glaring at me since we started this game, Regina,' Emma said, her voice managing to only barely steer clear of sounding smug. 'If I was cheating, I really think you would have noticed by now.'

They were sat below deck, in what passed for the ship's dining room, with the battered chess set spread out across the entirety of the table that had already proved to be far too small to seat the full, mismatched crew around it. Upon hearing the group's complaints on their first night Hook had merely shrugged, explaining how he and his men had always preferred to eat their meals beneath the stars. As a result, this is what they had all taken to doing for the past two nights; leaving the dining room cold and empty, and therefore now the scene for Emma and Regina's latest unorthodox battle.

'I got up to get a drink halfway through,' Regina grumbled, shifting a pawn one square forwards even though she knew it was going to be of no use to her. 'You could have switched the board.'

Emma snorted, ignoring Regina's feeble move and shifting her rook across the board. 'As if you didn't have the entire board memorised before you left. I know you, Regina. Because I, for one, don't underestimate my opponents.'

Regina's dark eyes snapped up to meet the sheriff's. 'You think that I still underestimate you?'

'You did today,' Emma said, a faint smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. 'I saw your face when I suggested chess: I was surprised that you didn't start howling with laughter and then suggest that we play something slightly more up my intellectual capacity instead.'

'Well, I would have done. But as far as I'm aware, the ship doesn't have Hungry Hungry Hippos.'

'There it is,' Emma said, leaning forwards across the board with one eyebrow raised. 'That's you underestimating me.'

'Actually, that's me insulting you, dear.'

'Are you sure that's all it is?' Emma smirked. 'Because it sounds a lot like you're stalling.'

'I am _not _stalling.'

'Then make your move,' Emma said, crossing her arms over her chest. 'Show me how it's done.'

Regina gritted her teeth, biting down another catty remark, and forced herself to shift her focus back to the board in front of her.

_You can do this_, she sharply told herself, moving her queen forwards. _It's Emma Swan, for god's sake. If there's anyone in this land that you can surely beat at chess, it's her._

As it turned out, however – she couldn't. Barely ten minutes later Emma had claimed a blazing victory over Regina's black pieces, leaving the board almost razed to the ground. For a moment Regina could only gape down at it, quite convinced that she must have gone colour-blind and mixed their pieces up inside her head. But no: she had lost. She had lost to Emma Swan.

She groaned, covering her eyes with one hand.

'This trip gets worse and worse.'

'You put up a good fight,' Emma said. It was somehow more insulting to Regina that her opponent didn't even seem to be gloating – it was like she'd known from the very onset that this game would be hers, and easily.

'Do not patronise me, Miss Swan,' Regina snapped, trying to summon up her usual cool mayoral authority. Her voice faltered almost immediately when she realised with a jolt of extra humiliation that she was now actively sulking over losing a game of chess.

Emma broke down into hysterical giggles barely half a second later. 'Oh my _god_. You really can't stand this, can you?'

'Losing to a philistine like you?' Regina retorted, gathering up all of her black pieces and reassembling them for battle. 'Never. I demand a rematch.'

'Gladly,' Emma said, still sniggering. She lined her white pieces up with significantly less aggression than the woman sat opposite her. 'First, though – I'm claiming my prize.'

'Prize?' Regina's eyes snapped back up again. 'We didn't wager anything, did we?'

'No,' Emma shrugged, twisting her king and queen so that they were looking straight ahead. The effect was slightly ruined by the fact that the chess set was so old that neither of them had their heads anymore. 'But I'm claiming it anyway.'

Regina sighed. 'Fine. What do you want?'

'Go and make me a coffee.'

'…I somehow don't think that that's going to happen.'

'I'm not asking you to streak around the boat, Regina – which, believe me, would have been a satisfyingly humiliating second option. I just want a drink. My head hurts and I need caffeine.'

'Then go and get it yourself.'

'I won the game. I'm claiming my reward. Go and make me a coffee – and if you do, I'll let you have one of my cookies.'

Regina opened her mouth to repeat her refusal. Then she paused. 'You have _cookies?_'

'Found them in Mary Margaret's backpack,' Emma smirked. 'I hid them behind the plates. She's losing her mind without them, so if you want one then you'd better make me that coffee pretty damn fast.'

Suddenly Regina didn't need to be told twice. She was on her feet within seconds, making her way across to the galley with the surprisingly warming sound of Emma giggling following her every step.

A few minutes later she was on her knees, rummaging behind the sparse supply of dusty, cracked plates for the half-empty bag of cookies, when she heard talking coming from the dining room.

'Do you need a partner, lass?'

Regina groaned, tugging the bag free of the cupboard and shoving a cookie into her mouth. It was stale, and she wasn't sure that she even liked cookies anymore, but after two days of living off of noodles from a can and dry crackers, it was like caviar to her. Plus she needed something to distract her from the sound of Hook's slimy voice dripping across the dining room floor.

'No thanks,' Emma replied. 'I'm all set.'

Regina heard the scraping of wood on wood as Hook obviously pulled the bench back, taking up her own seat.

'Come on – let's have a quick match. I promise I'll be gentle with you.'

_I can _hear _him winking_, Regina rolled her eyes, getting back to her feet and filling the dented tin kettle with water. _How is that possible?_

'How nice of you,' Emma snorted. 'And you don't think that maybe you'll need me to be gentle with _you_?'

'Hardly, sweetheart,' Hook replied. And there it was: the challenge that Regina knew Emma would not let slide.

'Fine,' came the clipped reply, and then the click of a white pawn moving forwards. 'You did ask.'

They played in silence for a few minutes while Regina struggled to light the ship's old stove. Eventually she gave up, tossing the matches to one side and instead coaxing flames out of nowhere with a flick of her wrist. She nibbled on another cookie, knowing that even by using magic it would be a long while before the water had boiled. She considered returning to the dining room while she waited, but all of a sudden she found herself to be quite reluctant to do so – she doubted that she would be wanted there while Hook was keeping Miss Swan occupied.

Her face tightened. She turned away from the open door, hunting down two mugs.

'Hold on,' Hook's voice filtered through from the dining room after a few moments. 'What the bloody hell just happened?'

'You lost your queen,' Emma said simply, already sounding bored. 'Come on. Your move, Captain.'

'For god's bloody sake,' he muttered in response. 'You could have told me that you can actually play.'

'Because it's such a well-known fact that anyone with blonde hair and a pair of breasts can't play chess,' she retorted. 'Stupid mistake. I can only apologise.'

A pause followed, and then Emma's sharp voice returned.

'Hook. Unless you want to find your king somewhere other than cowering in the corner of the board, stop staring and get back to playing.'

'Right. Whatever you say, m'lady.'

Regina rolled her eyes. The water was beginning to boil and it was slowly drowning out their conversation. And yet, even though she wasn't sure that her stomach could take listening to much more of Hook's lecherous drawling, she found herself edging closer to the door so that she could keep listening nonetheless.

'Were you playing by yourself before I got here?' the captain asked after a few more moments of concentrated silence.

'No.'

'Who was here with you?'

'What does it matter?'

'Was it Regina?'

'Yes. So?'

'Nothing. It's just nice to see that you and our beloved queen of the darkness have finally become quite such good friends.'

Regina flinched at the sound of her name. There was something about Hook's tone that she didn't like – it wasn't just the same scathing tenor that people now instinctively adopted when referring to her. It was something darker: he was taunting Emma with it.

'Save it,' Emma almost growled in response. 'I wasn't joking about shoving that king somewhere that even you probably wouldn't enjoy.'

'Well, we could always give that a try and find out?'

'_Jesus_. Can you not?'

'Ahh, don't act all coy now. I still remember our conversation from last night even if you apparently don't.'

At this, Regina froze. The dull whining of the kettle filled the galley, and she strained her ears to hear over it.

Almost as if she sensed this, and apparently suddenly aware that their conversation could probably still be heard from the next room, Emma lowered her voice.

'I was drunk.'

'Yet again.'

'Cut the crap, Hook – I'm stuck on a ship, bored out of my mind, worried about my son, missing my home, and the only things I had to do were to either talk to a bunch of fairy tale characters, or get blind drunk. Which would you have chosen?'

'Well. I personally chose to_ watch_ you getting blind drunk in the hopes that I'd be able to take advantage of you afterwards.'

'Even after half a bottle of rum, I would have been able to push you over the side of the ship.'

'And I would have enjoyed seeing you try.'

'…Hook, this is the weakest attempt at trying to distract someone from a game of chess that I've ever seen.'

'I don't care about the game, Swan. I want to know – did you mean what you said last night?'

By now Regina's breath was catching sharply against the inside of her throat. She took another step closer to the open door, pressing her back against the wall: her stomach was hurting. She was nervous and shaking and she couldn't quite explain why.

'I don't remember what—'

'You remember.'

'I said a lot of stuff. Be more specific.'

'Well, for starters, you told me that you were drinking alone because you wanted to get away from everyone on this ship. And now I find you down here, in the dark, playing chess by yourself.'

'I wasn't playing—'

'Did you really mean it? You want to get away from _everyone_?'

Regina heard Emma sigh, and her chest tightened. 'What does it matter? So I don't exactly relish being in the company of Rumplestiltskin – what does that matter to you?'

'You've been avoiding everyone. Including your parents. Including me.'

'...do _not _try and put yourself in the same camp as my parents.'

'Fine. But you're still avoiding the question. What about the _other _thing that you said?'

'Of course I'm avoiding it – I don't want to talk to you about it.'

'You talked to me about it last night.'

'I was _drunk_!'

'Yes, I recall. So what about it? Did you mean the other thing?'

Emma groaned. 'What other thing?'

'Don't give me that, Swan.'

As the pair argued, the kettle finally finished screeching and faded back into silence. Regina swallowed, filling up two mugs that almost seemed clean with the suspiciously cloudy water. Behind her, the conversation continued.

'You're stalling.'

'Just like you're stalling with this goddamn game?'

'_Forget _the game! Did you mean it?'

'I… I don't have to talk about this with you.'

'You don't have much of a choice – you're avoiding everyone else. Unless you fancy talking to our very own Ms Mills about it? I could call her back in—?'

'Hook, I swear to _God_…'

'Just tell me,' he said, less aggressively this time. His voice was lower and Regina could barely catch it over the sound of her heart beating furiously in her ears. 'You can't just… confess something like that without expecting me to ask about it.'

'I. Was. _Drunk_.'

'So you didn't mean it?'

'It's none of your business.'

'It was my business last night when you started telling me how you can't be on this ship anymore because… what was it? It _hurts _you? Your heart feels like a fist that won't unclench?'

'_Hook_—'

'Because you feel sea sick even though there's no waves? Because your feelings are clouding everything that you do and you can't concentrate and you can't sleep and all you want to do is scream? Was that it?'

Regina dropped the kettle to the work surface with a clatter. The last dregs of boiling water splashed out across the wood, a few drops landing on her hands. She didn't notice.

'Hook. Stop it.'

'You told me that you have _feelings, _Emma. You can't just sit there and pretend that last night didn't happen.'

'As far as I'm concerned, it didn't.'

'You're just to just pretend that you didn't tell me that you're in—'

'Stop it. _Stop it_.'

Regina couldn't bear to hear any more after that. Her hands stung, the papery skin there scalded from the drops of boiling water. They were throbbing, but the pain in her stomach was far worse.

Emma was in love. With Hook.

'Look, Emma—'

'Hook, shut _up_. I didn't mean to tell you that and there's no _way _that anything is going to—'

She suddenly snapped her mouth shut, seeing Regina appear in the doorway to the room with a full mug of coffee clenched in either hand. After a few moments Hook swivelled in his seat, a lecherous smirk still plastered across his face.

_He looks so proud of himself_, Regina thought as she forced herself to walk into the room. _He's managed to make a broken-hearted woman fall for him. And he's only going to break it again_.

She wanted to smash the mug over his head. Instead, she firmly set them both down on the table before him.

'You're in my seat, Hook.' Her voice was flat.

'Right you are,' he said, grinning up at her with one eyebrow raised. 'My apologies, your majesty. Miss Swan and I were just… settling where we both stand.'

'Hook,' Emma muttered, her eyes fixed firmly on the table.

He got up from his seat, striding over to the stairs that led back up to the deck without a backwards glance.

'Enjoy the game,' he threw over his shoulder as she climbed up to the top. Silence fell in the dining room.

Regina slid back into her seat, grimacing at how warm the captain had left it. She pushed Emma's mug forwards, followed by the bag of cookies that she had managed to carry between her pinky finger and the heel of her hand. She never looked up.

'I suppose we had better redo the board,' she said after a moment, her voice low. She heard Emma clear her throat.

'Regina…'

'It looks like our beloved Captain was an even weaker opponent than I was. That's comforting to know.'

'Regina, look—'

'No, Miss Swan,' Regina suddenly snapped, forcing herself to raise her eyes. Emma was fidgeting on the very edge of her seat, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. At Regina's interruption her eyebrows had knitted together, her green eyes suddenly wide. 'You don't have to explain. You don't owe me anything.'

'But I do. Hearing that, it must have been—'

'Oh, do give me some credit, Miss Swan,' Regina spat out, dragging her pieces back to their starting positions and quickly realising that she was putting most of them in the wrong places. She carried on nonetheless. 'We played one game of chess together – that's it. There's nothing else. We're not friends and I certainly do not care about whatever feelings you're harbouring.'

Emma's green eyes turned misty as she blinked, shaking her head. 'You… you don't?'

'Of course I don't,' Regina muttered, trying to line up her pawns. Emma's pieces remained scattered across the board from her previous game, untouched. 'Why would I?'

Emma's mouth trembled momentarily as she struggled to formulate a response. 'I don't know. I just… it must be weird to hear it.'

'Hardly,' Regina scoffed, drowning under the feeling that her heart was about to rip its way out of her chest. 'I know your type, Emma – you're a child. You fall for people like a baby falls while learning to walk. You'll cry, you'll sulk, and you'll get over it. You don't need my input in this.'

'You don't have _anything _to say about it? Seriously?'

'No, Miss Swan,' Regina dragged her eyes upwards once more. Emma jumped when she realised that they were dull and flat, completely devoid of expression. 'I have nothing to say about it at all.'

Silence fell. It was quite clear that the game was over before it had begun.

Regina sighed, scraping the bench back behind her, and stood up. Emma didn't look up to watch her go: her eyes remained glued to her headless king and his headless queen, scattered across the board looking like nothing more than columns of a ruined, burned out building.

'I'll be on deck if you need me,' Regina said before she walked away. 'Though, given that our dear captain will be up there with me – I doubt that you will.'

And then she walked away, climbing the stairs and leaving Emma swallowing down tears.

* * *

'_Are you sure you're not just saying this because you're hammered?' Hook asked, tilting his head to one side. The blonde woman standing before him was leaning over the railings, even though she'd been warned countless times not to, with the half-empty bottle of rum still dangling between her fingers._

_She shook her head sadly. 'I wish I was. Liking her, it's… it's like living in a drought. It's dry and it hurts and I wish I could just go back to hating her, but I'm stuck like this now. And it really sucks.'_

'_And here was me thinking that you've been lusting over _me _all of this time,' Hook smirked, leaning back against the railings beside her. She raised an eyebrow, taking another swig of the liquor. _

'_You wish,' she muttered, shaking her head. 'That would be so much easier.'_

'_You think I'm any likelier to take you than she is?'_

'_I think _Gold_ is likelier to take me than she is.'_

'…_you might have a point. She's not exactly the loving type, is she?'_

'_But that's the thing,' Emma said sadly, watching the faint flickering of mermaids' tails breaking the distant surface of the water. 'She could be. She just won't let herself.'_

'_That's got nothing to do with you, though.'_

'_It's got everything to do with me,' Emma said flatly, feeling that pull of sadness that Hook had warned them all about on their first day aboard the ship: the mermaids fed on sadness. They pulled you in with your own heartache, smothering you with it. And then they drowned you with it. Right then, her sadness was an anchor threatening to drag her down into the crushing black stillness of the locker. She sighed. 'Because I'm the one who broke her.'_

'_Broken things can be fixed, lass.'_

_Emma looked round at him curiously, narrowing her eyes. They were still bright green even in the dim light. 'Why are you being so nice about this, Hook?'_

_He could only shrug. 'I was broken once too. And someone fixed me.'_

'_I think Regina might be broken beyond repair.'_

_A faint smile appeared on Hook's lips. 'Only if you leave her on the floor to be trampled on. Pick her up – she might hold together better than you think.'_

* * *

Emma pushed the cold coffee away from her, letting the half-empty bag of cookies fall to the floor.

_How wrong could he have been_? she thought, leaning forwards against the table and pressing her closed eyes into her hands. _Regina and I... w__e're both broken. And not only does she still hate me - but she hates me enough to not even _care _that I like her._

She groaned to herself. _How… could she be so _angry _about it?_

It had been the strangest reaction: that flash in her eyes before they fell completely flat, completely expressionless. The way that she'd stormed out with her teeth gritted together. It was almost like she was hurt by it – _hurt_ by the fact that Emma loved her. Hurt that she would dare to do that to her.

Like it was a betrayal of some trust that she didn't realise they'd even had.

_And yet…_

Emma suddenly sat upright, mentally scanning through the conversation that she'd had minutes earlier with Hook. What they had actually said: what names had _actually _come up. She flicked through the entire encounter in her mind, her forehead creasing, desperately clinging onto whatever minute detail she could remember. And slowly, achingly, the realisation dawned on her: she hadn't mentioned Regina. Neither of them had. They'd just been talking about her liking… someone.

And Regina was broken. Broken people never saw what was right in front of them.

Before the pounding in her chest could slow down, before she could think better of what she was about to do, Emma leapt to her feet and clambered up the ladder. The vast deck was quiet, and she found Regina stood in her usual spot at the front of the ship – at least ten metres away from everyone else, and openly glaring at Hook.

She didn't realised that the blonde was charging up to her until she was by her side, wrapping her fingers around her wrist and wordlessly pulling her away.

'Emma...?'

Emma didn't respond. She just tugged Regina back down below decks, ignoring her stammers of protest and the perplexed looks coming from every other person stood on that boat.

'_Miss Swan,_' Regina spat the moment that they were stood on solid ground once more. Emma kept pulling, leading Regina away from the staircase and down a narrow hallway into the sleeping hold of the ship. She dragged the startled mayor inside, forced her ahead of her, and then shut the door behind them. When Regina turned around she found that Emma was leant back against it, her green eyes wide and frantic.

'What the hell do you think you're doing?' Regina snapped, crossing her arms across her chest. 'Did you not hear me before? I have no interest in hearing about your little adolescent crush. Now let me out.'

'What did you hear, Regina?' Emma ignored her, taking a step forwards into the room. Regina blinked.

'Excuse me?'

'From the kitchen – what did you hear?'

'Miss Swan, this is—'

'Did you hear a name?' Emma persisted, taking another step forwards until the space between them began to collapse.

Regina stammered, 'I… no, you didn't say…'

'So why assume?' Emma asked, unblinking. Her nose was barely an inch away from Regina's, and yet the brunette refused to stand down. Keeping her arms crossed, she narrowed her eyes in response.

'Well, given that it seemed very unlikely that you were declaring your unrequited love for Rumplestiltskin, I—'

'Do you ever _see_, Regina?' Emma exploded, making Regina jump. 'You spend all day glaring at us all with those goddamn judgmental eyes, but do you ever really see anything? I don't like Hook! I can't stand him. He makes my skin crawl and, quite frankly, if he wasn't the one sailing this ship, I would have pushed him overboard on day one. The fact that you'd think that I could like him is actually verging on insulting.'

'My apologies,' Regina replied without a trace of remorse in her voice. 'Now, may I go?'

'No,' Emma said, taking another step forwards. This time, Regina found herself flinching. She inched backwards. 'Because you're still not seeing.'

'Seeing what?'

'_Reality_,' Emma threw her hands in the air. 'You're looking, but you don't see what's right in front of you.'

'What's right in front of me,' Regina snapped, hoping that her sharp tone would force Emma to back down. It didn't. 'Is a bossy, interfering woman with an ego problem. I'm not _interested _in your love life_. _Now, Miss Swan – let me out of this room.'

'Do you know why you couldn't see?' Emma asked in a low voice, stepping to one side to block the exit. 'Do you?'

'No, Miss Swan – but do feel free to attempt to enlighten me with your knowledge of optometry.'

'Because you were jealous.'

Finally, Emma watched as Regina froze. Her dark eyes faded to black. '...I was what?'

'Jealous,' Emma said simply. She took one final step forwards, forcing Regina backwards until her spine hit the wooden beam that ran down the cabin's wall. 'You thought I liked Hook, and it ate at you. You couldn't _stand _it.'

'Miss Swan, you are so far from—'

'You push everyone away,' Emma said, her face full of sadness and something that looked like desperation. 'Including me. You do it all the time. But I'm the only one who's going to claw back. Because I never said I liked Hook – you just heard it. I said that I liked someone else. Someone _else _was driving me mad, driving me over the edge. Someone else on this godforsaken boat is making me want to tear my own heart out and throw it to the mermaids just to stop it from hurting anymore.'

Regina's own heart was thudding against the walls of her chest, so violently that she was sure that Emma must have been able to hear it from her position only inches away. But her green eyes didn't blink, and her arms remained hanging by her sides. She watched Regina, and she waited. Begging.

Finally Regina swallowed, and forced herself to speak. When she did, her voice was small.

'Then who…' she faltered, the words cracking. She could no longer meet Emma's gaze. 'Who…?'

She didn't have to finish her question. Emma answered it the only way she knew how: by tumbling forwards, sliding her hands around the queen's neck, and pulling her lips towards her.


End file.
